President Trump on Wednesday sought to turn down the heat on confrontation with Iran before the showdown spiraled out of control.
In doing so, he brought relief both to Republicans, who believe he can claim a victory, and to Democrats, who had warned that Trump was careening toward a major and potentially catastrophic war.
In remarks at the White House on Wednesday morning, Trump focused on his insistence that Iran should not get a nuclear weapon and on his long-standing criticisms of the nuclear deal agreed between Tehran and other major powers, including the United States, in 2015.
But there was no sign that Trump was inclined to ramp up the conflict with Iran any further.
Hours before, Iran had fired missiles into at least two Iraqi bases that host U.S. forces. There were no U.S. casualties in the attacks, however, and Tehran may have calibrated its actions to lessen the risk that the situation could spiral out of control.
The attack came in response to the U.S.’s killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force, in Baghdad on Jan. 3.
The situation remains febrile, however. On Wednesday afternoon U.S. time, reports emerged of a further attack in the Green Zone in Baghdad, though details were hazy and there were no casualties reported immediately.
Some Democrats argued that the unpredictability of the situation held political danger for Trump, whose impulsive style has long been a focus for his critics.
“If this ends now, then I suspect people will move on,” said Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. “If it continues, then voters will have pause about Donald Trump’s leadership and veracity, and his ability to act as commander in chief.”
Roginsky’s reference to veracity appeared to be an allusion to the vague explanations that surround why Trump ordered the strike on Soleimani in the first place.
Previous administrations, under former President George W. Bush and former President Barack Obama, weighed action against the Iranian general and decided against it, in part because of worries that the reverberations could be too great.
U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have suggested that American intelligence learned that Soleimani posed an imminent threat.
There has been no significant evidence yet made available to support that assertion, however — something that disconcerts even some Republicans, who remember the intelligence failures that dogged the run-up to the Iraq War.
Still, for now, some Republicans believe the president has won a victory over his liberal critics, eliminating an American adversary while being apparently able to avoid major negative repercussions.
“He managed his way through a significant international crisis and came out the victor,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “He clearly won on a very important national security issue. The world’s worst terrorist is off the battlefield, he didn’t have to pay much of a price at all, and he has restored deterrence with Iran.”
The controversy has also roiled the domestic political landscape.
Impeachment, which had been Topic A in American politics, has been sidelined by the focus on Iran.
The issue has put foreign policy at the center of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away.
In particular, it has renewed scrutiny of former Vice President Joe Biden, the national front-runner. Biden’s allies say this could be to his benefit, since it reminds voters of his experience in foreign policy. But the danger is that it also reminds the electorate of Biden’s 2002 Senate vote to give Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq.
Biden’s two leading rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have been more emphatic in their criticisms of Trump’s actions.
Republicans, meanwhile, hope that the debate will put the Democrats at odds with the position of the American public at large.
Mackowiak noted that the matter was sure to come up at the next televised Democratic debate, in Iowa on Tuesday.
“All the Democrats will have to answer whether it was right to take Soleimani out,” he predicted. “I would guess 80 percent of the country would say yes and the Democrats will say no.”
There has not yet been extensive polling on that point but the surveys that have emerged suggest a nation much more closely divided.
An Economist/YouGov poll conducted Jan. 5-7 indicated that the strike against Soleimani was approved of by 44 percent of Americans and disapproved of by 38 percent.
As with virtually every issue in contemporary politics, responses broke heavily along partisan lines — only 15 percent of Democrats approved of the drone strike, but it was backed by 84 percent of Republicans.
Some Democrats remain fiercely critical of Trump’s conduct, pointing to the de facto destruction of the nuclear deal and Trump’s continued pressing of sanctions against Iran.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called sanctions “economic warfare” in a tweet posted after Trump’s White House remarks Wednesday.
“You cannot claim to want deescalation and then announce new sanctions with no clear goal. This is not a measured response!” she added.
But the rhetoric was even more heated on the other side.
The Trump campaign, in a Wednesday email, insisted that Sanders’s criticism of the strike on Soleimani meant he “can’t be trusted to defend American lives.”
With Trump scheduled to hold a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday evening, there will be plenty more where that came from.
“At the next rally, what’s he going to be talking about?” Doug Heye, a former communications director of the Republican National Committee, asked rhetorically. “‘I killed a terrorist.’”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.